The only thing with Handbrake is that it doesn't work 100% of the time. I tried backing up 2 movies I got over X'mas so that I didn't have to take my superdrive and dvd's and it didn't work. I thought, maybe, it required an update, but no periodic updates were available. Are some, here, experiencing the same when ripping your collections?

yeah i have had some problems with handbrake, I'm ripping my Soprano videos to my iPod for my daily commute on the train and even with the volume to the max its a stuggle to hear with my BT headphones on, sitting at my desk at work this morning I am relying on the volume from the iPod itself without using a headset and its just waaaaay too low. It's really not good enough.

so which ones actually rip the entire uncompressed dvd like mactheripper into a .vob file? Is there anything out there that does exactly what mactheripper does? i dont want mine compressed or put into any other format other than .vob (i will gladly pay plenty of money, because im going to start loosing money by my kids destroying their/my dvds.)

i used mtr forever, but as everyone else, i cant now with lion. (and obtaining the new version seems so sketchy) im thinking of installing snow leopard in another partition to start using it again.....but i really need something that can handle the newer encryptions they use these days, especially dvd dvds......which i have yet to be able to do at all....and they cost the most.

even if it still cant do disney or newer stuff, i would still like an mtr like rip.

ive been looking for ever now...

i do have windows 7 on a secondary hd....so i may have to check out slysoft...

Makemkv will do that for free. You can then take the output from Makemkv and run it through handbrake to down convert to a file optimized for iPad, ATV, iPhone, etc.

I've been trying to rip some blurays to stream from my iMac on my Apple TV2. I can successfully rip them with MakeMKV and use Handbrake to convert them to m4v but when I stream the movie, there are audio drops during the movie.

I prefer The Little App Factory's RipIt to convert the DVD to a DVD Image and then Elgato’s Turbo.264HD to convert to m4v. It is very fast with this little usb dongle, about similar to recent iMac i7-quad core as I get an average of 88-127fps on my late 2010 11" 1.6Ghz C2D Air at 80% CPU Utilization, during the conversion process.

Handbrake is Awesome, but it doesn't fare too well with encrypted DVD's...... I tried backing up all of my DVD's by ripping them onto my external hard drive, and while it works with most of them, some DVD's are encrypted and therefore couldn't rip them with Handbrake.

I prefer The Little App Factory's RipIt to convert the DVD to a DVD Image and then Elgato’s Turbo.264HD to convert to m4v.

Can you clarify this?
What _software_ leverages the Turbo.264 to compress the DVD rip?

Is there one package that can do both? I'd like to repurpose an old PPC Mini to ripping because, of the compression is on the USB dongle, then it doesn't matter what the host computer is doing. It's a data copy & then it uses the hardware in the USB stick.

I don't know about 'better' I think it comes down to persona preference. MakeMKV is simple, but doesn't allow you to adjust bit rate. The interface of Handbrake it horrible and confusing compared to DvdFab, now sure DvdFab isn't cheap, but then it does come with support and they have a whole suite of programs to choose from for different tasks. Free isn't always 'better'.